Water's End

by Jessica Deforest

  Without a word, the policemen turned and walked out of the kitchen. Tully laughed and went out the door behind him. First she heard the patrol car pull out, then Tully's Sedan Deville.

  When her feet would hold her and her head calmed down, she pulled the hatbox out of Tully's closet and put it an old footlocker behind some suitcases in the garage.

  As she washed her face, she made a vow. Today was not the first time in thirty-three years that Tully had hit her, but it would be the last. Then she made another vow. She would leave him, no matter what happened or how she had to scrape by. Even being in a homeless shelter would be better than this. That night, she began a prayer she was to repeat every night for the rest of her life: Dear Lord, show me what you want me to do, and give me the strength to do it.

  The next day, Anne knew the meaning of miracles when she was looking through some files for her frequent-flier mileage records. She found a credit-union statement. It was for a savings account. With her name on it as co-owner. And it had $16,000 in it.

  Should she take the money? Tully would never voluntarily give her a cent, and she needed to pay for deposits on an apartment, a retainer for an attorney, plus several months of living expenses. Her salary and the money she had saved would help, but they wouldn't be enough.

  Without another thought, she immediately went to the credit union. Heart pounding in her ears, she showed her identification card and told the teller she would like to make a withdrawal of $15,999.

  She was barely able to suppress the hysterical laughter that threatened to boil out of her when the clerk said, "How would you like that, ma'am?"

  "A cashier's check made out to me, please," Anne said, hardly believing she had pulled it off, even when she put the check in her billfold.

  Intuition led her to their bank, where she showed her driver's license, asked a teller for the balance on the joint checking account, and discovered another $4,000. She wrote a counter check on that account, leaving only one dollar behind. Without blinking, she stuffed the wad of bills in her purse, and then opened an account in her name downtown at the bank where she worked.

  She didn't feel guilty at all but considered the money a small compensation for some of the things she'd had to do without over the years. It was a down payment under the heading of pain and suffering, although there wasn't enough money in the world to make up for all the damage Tully had done. The money was, however, a start on a new life.

  Knowing Tully would be on a fishing trip at the beach with two of his drinking buddies that day, Anne went back to the house and packed two big suitcases. She filled garbage bags with the rest of her clothes and shoes, stuffing everything into her car. Without looking back, she drove downtown and checked into a luxury hotel.

  After a gourmet room-service meal that evening, she propped herself up in the big bed and had chocolates and champagne before she called her husband. "Tully," she said when he answered the phone, "I guess you noticed I left you."

  "But who will take care of me?" He said, sounding bewildered.

  "That's your problem, not mine," she said. "Oh, and I took most of the money in the checking account, but I left a little something for you." Thinking of the one-dollar balance, she stifled a giggle.

  "You bitch. You think you have the upper hand, don't you? I'll see you get nothing. And you won't get anything out of the credit union, because I took your name off the account."

  "Fool me once," she said, "but never again. I've already got that money."

  He slammed down the phone.

  Chapter 20

  The next day she hired a lawyer, rented an apartment a couple of blocks from the bank where she worked, and bought furniture. Everything fell into place perfectly. She purchased her first angel print that day, along with drapes in the same fabric as her sofa. For the first time since she married Tully, she didn't have to beg and plead to have what she wanted. It felt good.

  During her years with him, she had let her hair go back to its natural chestnut brown. That afternoon, she went to her friend Jimmy's beauty shop. Handsome and witty, he cut hair better than anyone else in town.

  "Give me the works," she said. "Nails, haircut, and let's get me back to my old red-haired self."

  While the manicure lady gave her a French manicure, the pedicure lady worked her magic, finishing off with a foot massage that made her feet feel like singing. Next, Jimmy gave her a great haircut and dyed her hair a deep, coppery red. When they were done, she felt like a whole new person in many ways.

  "Oooh, la, la," Jimmy said. "I remember you."

  The Saturday after she left, she knew Tully had planned to spend the weekend visiting Alabama relatives who were staying at a motel on the beach, so Anne decided to go back and gather some more of her things. She rented a van and drove to the house, where she parked in the driveway and cautiously peeked in the garage door window. Tully's car was gone, so she tried her key in the front door. It wouldn't turn. He had changed the locks.

  Remembering the remote in her purse, she tried it, and it still worked. She opened the garage door and found that Tully had once again forgotten to lock the door from the garage into the kitchen. Quickly, she pulled the van in, closed the garage door behind her, and spent the afternoon packing up items she needed to set up housekeeping. She took her pots and pans, dishes, sewing machine, stereo, CDs, china, and crystal; whatever she could cram into the van in the short time she had.

  These were things she had brought to the marriage; she would jolly well take them with her. Deep inside, she knew she couldn't trust Tully to give her what was rightfully hers, and she wasn't about to fight over anything or wait for a court to award it to her.

  "What do you mean, coming in my house?" he yelled into the phone that evening.

  "It's still my house too, and I have a right to my things," she said, slamming down the phone.

  Six months after she left him, he moved in a girlfriend, a homely woman from Bosnia the same age as their daughter, Vicki. She was the mother of the five children Tully had tutored in English the past four years. Anne thought he was insane for taking on small children at his age, especially since he had never paid any attention to his own.

  Her attorney, Mary Ann, was not surprised. "'That explains a lot," she said. From then on, Mary Ann referred to the woman as Mrs. Gold-digger.

  Anne knew he had been up to something, especially when he gave her a new perfume. "It smells like a cologne a lady had on at the supermarket," he said. The stuff smelled too sweet, like fly spray. She wondered what on earth he would do with such a young woman. He certainly wasn't any good in bed anymore.

  Shortly before their court date, Tully agreed to divide up the rest of the furniture. As she pulled in the driveway, she recoiled at the sight of a ragged stump where her magnolia tree had once stood. The bastard had chopped it down. Heartsick, Anne reminded herself that this was no longer her house, and he could do whatever he wanted with his property.

  Just to make sure Tully behaved himself, Anne had brought along a couple of burly male friends from church. To her surprise, Tully was not a problem, but the girlfriend, a tall, skinny washed-out blonde with a sallow complexion and faded blue eyes. She loudly disputed everything Anne took from the house, blowing cigarette smoke at her and screaming that Anne was taking too much.

  Clouds of perfume, which coincidentally smelled like fly-spray, permeated the foyer. What with the all-too-familiar perfume and the cigarette smoke, Anne had an asthma attack, coughing violently until she found her rescue inhaler. Finally, the woman's mother, ashamed, led her daughter off into the other end of the house.

  Inwardly, Anne smiled as her friends loaded her grandfather clock and her prized oil paintings into the truck. Tully had haggled and argued over dividing up the antiques, which rankled her. After all, it was her idea to buy them. Tully resisted at first, until he discovered old things were cheaper and better in quality. Carefully researching, she learned how to identify, repair, and refinish antiques, and it was Anne who
had restored most of the furniture in the house.

  One of her early ventures in Houston was an antique shop she purchased with money inherited from her aunt, and she was a licensed appraiser. Consequently, although Tully may have kept half of everything just to spite her, Anne got the half that was valuable. What she left behind was mostly pretty junk. And of course, she was entitled to her grandmother's things, which she had inherited before she married him.

  She went to court the first Monday in July, fearing a battle, but Tully didn't even show up. His attorney tried to make an issue of what she feared most, the loan from her in-laws, but the judge was having none of it and, in view of her long marriage, awarded Anne half of all the joint assets.

  Tully was ordered to sell the house or buy her $95,000 equity, plus he had to pay her substantial permanent alimony. In addition, he was required to continue the payments on his military survivor benefit policy and keep her as beneficiary.

  Anne wasted no time in getting all the government paperwork sent in to garnish his retired pay for her alimony and the survivor benefit payments. It was over. The day after the divorce, her son called to tell her Tully had married the ugly girlfriend, Mrs. Gold-digger, that afternoon.

  Anne felt lifted up. Once and for all, she was free of Tully Weldon, and she would no longer have to fear that he would try to get her to come back. At last she could put him behind her and start a new life in California. The children were grown and all settled in lives of their own.

  Now it was her turn. Just as they had moved away to begin their lives, she would take charge of her own destiny. With Vicki in Alabama, Scott in Virginia, and Zach in New York, they were never far away, only a few hours by plane.

  Annoying as Agnes Mills had been for most of her life, as Aunt Jeannie often said, she was the only mother Anne would ever have. Now her mother was sounding less than lucid on the phone: forgetful, confused, repeating herself, and Anne was concerned about her.

  Living in California had always been Anne's dream, and she would worry less if she lived near her mother. Everything was working out better than she planned, especially since she didn't have to worry about paying back the loan that had hung so heavily over her for so long.

  Fortunately, the bank transferred her to its Santa Barbara operations center, so she didn't even have to worry about finding a job. And the move was a promotion. She closed the sale of her equity in the house and put the check in her bank account. The lease was up on her apartment, her car was sold, and once she was packed and the movers drove off, she took a limo to the airport. Anne boarded the plane without looking back.

  Upon her arrival in Santa Barbara, Anne was stunned at how much her mother had changed in the few months since she had seen her last. Agnes Mills was more confused and forgetful than Anne had ever seen her, asking her five times in less than an hour how long she could stay. "Did you say you'd be here few days, dear? When do you have to go back?" she asked, even though Anne told her she was there permanently.

  At eighty-two, Agnes was apparently healthy, but much thinner than Anne could ever remember. When she opened the refrigerator to pour a glass of tea, Anne discovered only a couple of moldy pork chops and six boxes of Twinkies.

  "Mom, when's the last time you went to the store?" she asked.

  "Let's see," she said, "I think it was yesterday. No, maybe it was Tuesday. The refrigerator has lots of food in it. Just help yourself, darling."

  Although she originally planned to spend a week or two with her mother while she was house hunting, Anne knew she couldn't leave her alone. Dementia had robbed Agnes Mills of much of her memory, and Anne was worried about her. The once-cranky old woman had become a sweet, wifty little soul who begged her to come live with her. Although Anne had planned to buy a house nearby, in view of her mother's mental state, she knew she should move in with her.

  Once Anne settled into her mother's house, she bought a new pearl-white Toyota sedan with a red leather interior, and she took Agnes on several little drives.

  "Oh, my dear," Agnes said, "it's so good to get out of the house. I haven't been for a ride since the last time you were here. I love your rental car. When did you say you have to go back?" She repeated the same dialogue each time they got into the car.

  Before she started her new job, Anne hired Judy, the woman next door, to look in on Agnes several times a day. Judy was retired but in good physical and mental health. "Very frankly, I've been bored, and I can use the extra money," she said, "so I'm glad you asked."

  Now that Anne was director of publications for the region, her new job was challenging, but her office crew was friendly and easy to work with. For the first time she could remember, Anne looked forward to each new day.

  Every weekend she worked on the house, which she renovated, little by little, painting, wallpapering, scraping, sanding, and refinishing. Before long, the dreary cottage took on a sunny look, even prettier, she thought, than her house in Texas. This time, there was no compromising, no arguing. And dear, wifty Agnes Mills loved everything she did, although she was never quite sure just what, exactly, Anne had done at any given time.

  Because Anne was caring for their mother, Joan insisted the house be deeded to Anne when their mother died, but Anne didn't feel right about it. Instead, she bought the property outright from her mother, with a proper mortgage and everything pleasantly agreed upon by all parties.

  Feeling renewed, Anne reupholstered or refinished some of her mother's old furniture and donated the rest to the Salvation Army. Arranging her white wicker furniture on the porch, she hung rosy chintz at the windows and filled the rooms with her antiques, shipped from Texas.

  The old empire china closet looked completely at home in the dining room, its mahogany glowing. The best addition, she thought, was a new Venetian crystal chandelier extravagantly dripping crystals that bent the light streaming through the windows into rainbows. The colors spread across the entire room. Anne was inwardly delighted.

  Next she began work on the tangled yard, digging up weeds, cleaning out rose beds, and trimming back the pink bougainvillea that threatened to engulf the porch. Soon hybrid tea roses scented the garden, the window boxes held ivy and red geraniums nodding their heavy heads in the breeze, and grass grew once more on the shady lawn.

  It took Anne several months of sweaty, grimy labor to get the house and grounds in shape, but the end result was better than she hoped for. Now she felt as if the house truly belonged to her.

  Time sped by so fast these days that Anne sometimes wished she could put the brakes on and slow things down a bit. Funny, considering how time dragged by when she and Tully were married. Here it is, November already, she was thinking. What mom always said is true. Time does go by fast when you're happy.

  She had just started putting up Christmas decorations when her daughter called her. "Mom, are you sitting down? If you aren't, you should. It's Dad. It happened this morning," she said, sucking in a big breath. "He was killed in an automobile accident, a head-on collision with a drunk driver on the way to Daytona," she said. "Dad wasn't drinking."

  Although Anne felt bad for Tully, and even worse for the children, she couldn't help but notice the irony of it all. Now, she was truly free. He couldn’t hurt her ever again. It took her a while to sort out all of her feelings, but she could not grieve for her former spouse. For too many years she had to detach from him, and she knew the break had been final many years before the divorce.

  Not until a few days later did it occur to her that she would receive Tully's survivor benefit, which her attorney had asked for in the divorce, although she never expected or even wanted to profit by her former husband’s death. It took a while before reason set in, and she knew she didn't have to feel guilty. After all, half the money that paid for the premiums all those years was hers.

  Thinking of how much Tully had denied her, she decided she more than deserved to receive half of his military retired pay every month for the rest of her life. Lord knows she hadn't had much of
his money while they were married.

  The only restriction was that she couldn't remarry before she turned fifty-five, a moot point, because she passed that milestone in March. Besides, she knew she would never marry again.

  She didn't go back for the funeral because there was really no reason to. Over the next month she talked with the children by telephone as they poured out their grief, hurt, and anger. Tully hadn't left them a thing; everything he had, which wasn't much, went to the new wife, who refused them even a keepsake of their father.

  Mrs. Gold-digger and her family swarmed over the house, stripping and selling everything they could. Anne's friend and former neighbor, Jane, called her the last day of the massive yard sale. "Boy, were they surprised when the antiques you left behind brought so little money."

  "I was hoping that would be the case," Anne said.

  Tully had taken out a second mortgage on the house to pay Anne her share of the equity, and there was still the original mortgage on the house, so the new Mrs. Weldon wouldn't realize much on its sale, nor could she afford to keep the house, because Anne got the survivor benefit. Inwardly smiling, Anne thought that Karma could be more than just sometimes.

  On a Saturday afternoon about six months after Tully died, Anne was on the patio sipping a cup of tea when her mother answered the telephone. "It's for you, dear," she said.

  Anne went inside and took the receiver from her mother.

  "Anne?" The voice gave her goosebumps. "This is an echo of your past."

  "David?" she said. "Is it really you?"

  "'Fraid so. I can't believe you knew my voice after all these years."

  How could I ever forget it? I hear it in my dreams nearly every night. "Where are you?" she asked.

  "Hollywood. I live here now."

  She sighed. "I looked for you for so long but couldn't find you. What do you do? Are you still modeling?"

  "Yes. And acting a little."

  "David, when I was in labor with my first baby, a nurse handed me a magazine with a picture of you in a full-page ad on the back cover. There you were, all tan skin and white teeth, in a swimming pool, holding up a soft drink. When I told the nurse you were my old boyfriend, she flipped out."